


some day

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 17:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17687528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: Phil takes Dan to the zoo on his twentieth birthday.





	some day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [obsessivelymoody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivelymoody/gifts).



"Did you know this is the world's oldest scientific zoo?" Phil reads off the back of a pamphlet handed to them when they passed through the gates. 

Dan reaches over to snatch it out of his hand when Phil stumbles. "No, but I know you can't read and walk at the same time." 

Phil sticks his tongue out. "That's not how you treat someone on your birthday." 

"Why not?" Dan asks. "It's my birthday, not yours, wouldn't that mean I get to decide how I treat people?" 

"No." Phil's voice is stubborn even when he's talking nonsense and there's a smile lurking behind his eyes. "On your birthday everyone's paying attention to you, so that means you're meant to be extra nice." 

"Bullshit." Dan speaks a bit too loudly. A woman with three small children gives him a side eye. 

He's glad Phil doesn't see. Phil hates shit like that. Dan doesn't care. 

*

His mind has been a stormy thing lately. 

He feels like he's permanently stuck in a loop in his own mind, like he's playing a video game and he just failed a level and he's waiting to find out it starts all over again. 

Outside of his gap year, school is all he's ever known. School and shit service jobs and dreaming of a future where his life held something else. 

Now he doesn't have that. But he doesn't have the something else, either. 

"Dan," Phil says, voice full of that gentle, cautious tone he uses so much with Dan lately. Dan hates it except for the times that he needs it, the times that it's all he can cling to. 

Because - Phil. That's what he does have. Phil, and making videos, and hoping that'll pay the rent in the flat they're going to move into soon. 

"Yeah?" Dan says.

"Stay with me?" Phil's all but pleading. 

Dan knows the surge of guilt he feels at Phil having to ask that is earned. He's been too long at his parents house, had too many days where he slept and stewed in all the failures of his life, where he didn't answer the phone. 

He's glad to be here right now though. He's happy, right now, with Phil. 

"I'm here," he says, and steps in close enough to press their arms together. 

*

They're a bit too skint for the proper restaurant, but Phil's smuggled crisps in his bag and they stand in line outside the aquarium kiosk to buy sandwiches with the sun shining a bit too brightly on them. 

Dan doesn't care. He thinks it's cute how Phil's nose is already going pink. He wonders if he'll have tan lines - sunburn lines - in the shape of his fringe. He thinks back to the summer before, to Jamaica and tracing the line on Phil's hip where tender red bled into pale white. He remembers pressing his thumb into the soft spots of Phil's side just to watch the change in color. 

Then he stops remembering, because he's only one day out of his teenage years and thinking about Phil naked when he's in public usually only leads to mild discomfort and paranoid embarrassment. 

He does concede to the threat of sunburn enough to find them a nice shady spot to settle on, standing back as he watches Phil pull a small green blanket from his bag and then, from further into the depths, a small bottle of champagne and two plastic cups. 

"What's that?" Dan asks, a fizzy feeling in his stomach. 

"It's your birthday," Phil says, as if that's meant to explain everything. 

It doesn't, Dan thinks. It doesn't explain how he's so lucky as to have a boyfriend who wants to do things like have weekends out of town just to celebrate him, who listens to him cry and break down and shout sometimes, and still loves him just as much. 

What comes out of his mouth is: "Did you steal this blanket from your grandma?" 

Phil just laughs. "Bryony, so, might as well be." 

"I'm telling her you said that." Dan settles down, reaching for his sandwich while Phil pours them each a drink. The bottle is small enough that it'll only fill their glasses up twice apiece, but Dan doesn't care. He doesn't care that it's dry and kind of bitter and doesn't at all go with his sandwich. 

* 

"We should do more picnics," Phil says. 

He's laying down, shoes off and to the side. His shirt has ridden up a bit and Dan's trying not to look. 

"Manchester Zoo is shit," Dan says. 

"It is," Phil agrees. "But we'll come here. We'll do picnics and drink champagne at the zoo every weekend when we live in London some day.” 

Phil's always full of some days and one days and half-formed plans he has every faith will work out even without really knowing how. 

Dan doesn't mind, though. Dan's always too stuck in right now and a month ago and a year ago and every bad decision he's made since then. 

Sometimes it feels like Phil is the only decision he's made that wasn't bad. 

He looks at Phil again, at how soft and sleepy he looks. It's prime Phil cuddle time, that period right after eating when he doesn't want to move. Sometimes Dan can even milk a nap out of it. He's an expert at whining and pouting until Phil caves and ignores his responsibilities with Dan. 

But they can't cuddle now. This isn't Manchester, people aren't likely skulking around waiting on them, but they both get recognized now and then and they're both not sure if they want to wade into those murky waters of confirming what everyone mostly already knows about them. 

They talk about it sometimes, but it's always another some day conversation. Some day when they're older and they feel braver. Some day when their lives feel more put together. Then maybe the world will feel a bit more welcoming for them, but until that day comes Dan feels nothing but queasy relief at what they keep to themselves. 

It's not like it's stopping them from living their life - a life that includes a cheap champagne and sandwich picnic on a moth eaten blanket on the grass. 

*

They waste half an hour on digesting before Dan gets too restless to keep sitting. 

After they've cleared up their rubbish, Phil wants to buy Dan an ice cream. Dan understands this very clearly to mean that Phil wants an ice cream, and that Phil is not above usurping the special occasion of anyone in a nearby vicinity to sate the raging beast that is his sweet tooth. 

Not that Dan's going to complain. Free ice cream and a walk in the warmth through the bird safari leaves him with sticky fingers and a full heart. 

* 

Phil makes Dan suffer the indignity of a stranger taking a photo for them on Phil's phone with their faces placed in the circular openings of a cutout of two great apes. A middle aged man takes a picture that Dan is relieved to see is too blurry to be for anyone but themselves, and then Phil pulls Dan along. 

He thinks Phil's hand on his wrist is a cheeky bit of daring but he's in for a bigger shock when Phil presses him up against the high fence on the back side of the enclosure and kisses him soundly. 

It's over almost before it's begun, but Dan's heart still pounds. "What was that for?" 

Phil squeezes in tight, crushing Dan to him before he steps away just as a trickle of voices come nearer. For the second time that day, Phil just says: "It's your birthday."

*

His legs are beginning to twinge with soreness by the time they stand in front of the lion exhibit. "What time is dinner?" He asks, a gentle reminder though he doesn't really want to pull Phil away from his favorite part. 

"I saw two of the male lions having sex once," Phil says, instead of an answer. His voice is so matter of fact that Dan laughs without being able to stop, absolutely cracking up. 

"You fucking perv," he wheezes, and Phil looks shocked for a moment before he starts to laugh too. He shoves at Phil's arm and says. "Dinner. When we get to eat?" 

"I hate you," Phil says, pulling out his mobile. "We're supposed to meet Bryony and Wirrow in an hour, so we should probably leave." 

*

The sun is starting to set as they walk out of the gates. There’s a girl staring a bit too hard at them, but they walk a little faster and she doesn’t approach. He’ll feel guilty for feeling relieved about it later. 

"Did you have a good time?" Phil asks, in that low sweet voice of his that couldn't be any more worlds away from the one the cameras get to hear. 

“I had a great time,” Dan says. 

He’s not lying. His mind feels clear. He feels… happy. Happy like he’s not sure he has much at all in the past year, aside from those moments alone with Phil. He doesn’t think happiness is supposed to come from forgetting everything about your life. 

Maybe it won’t now. Now that uni is… out of the picture. Now that everything is a blank slate. Now that all he has to do is make videos and share his life with Phil. 

He looks to the side, at Phil’s profile as he stares at a pigeon dancing on the ground in front of them, at the way his fringe is a mess and he’s got an ice cream stain on his t-shirt and it hits him as they walk toward the train station that a year ago, living with Phil was the some day that he couldn’t imagine being real but knew he wanted more than anything. 

If he could go from living in his parents house in Wokingham to a Manchester flat with Phil in only a year, who knows what the next one will bring.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to sarah for the beta reading and constant inspiration! hope you like it, moody <3


End file.
